Do You Need To Push Yourself To The Limit?
No Pain, No Gain?
A common issue I often have is clients believing workouts need to be extra tough to make progress. So many people believe they have to be pushed to the max and fit as much as they can into a workout.
They judge how effective a workout is by how hard it was, how exhausted and sore they were after. None of these is a good way to judge a workout. Anyone can design a workout to tire you out and make you sore, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make progress and get better.
It’s not their fault they think like this. Most people in the fitness industry who sell something don’t have your best interest in mind, and aren’t always honest. Celebrities, athletes, personal trainers, and people on social media often exaggerate how hard and long their training routines are. All this gives the general public the wrong idea. Most people are just starting training and don’t know what's needed to achieve their goals.
Training hard is important, and you'll have to be past your comfort zone when performing sets, but you need to be able to train consistently and make progress over the long term. Many people start an exercise routine that is too ambitious and won't be able to do it for long. I've met I’ve talked before about the importance of consistency. One workout, or one week of training, doesn’t make any difference by itself, no matter how hard you train.
At 42 years old, at 90kg I have low body fat all year, can squat 230kg, but while I train hard, I don’t do anywhere as much as many of my clients first believed was needed when they started training with me that they needed to train to have low body fat. Good training is fairly simple
I’m not lazy; if doing more would achieve better results, I would do it. I train the way I do as it works, I can recover and do the next workout, and I can do it consistently for a long time. I also don’t have any aches and pains which not many people my age can say.
They judge how effective a workout is by how hard it was, how exhausted and sore they were after. None of these is a good way to judge a workout. Anyone can design a workout to tire you out and make you sore, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make progress and get better.
It’s not their fault they think like this. Most people in the fitness industry who sell something don’t have your best interest in mind, and aren’t always honest. Celebrities, athletes, personal trainers, and people on social media often exaggerate how hard and long their training routines are. All this gives the general public the wrong idea. Most people are just starting training and don’t know what's needed to achieve their goals.
Training hard is important, and you'll have to be past your comfort zone when performing sets, but you need to be able to train consistently and make progress over the long term. Many people start an exercise routine that is too ambitious and won't be able to do it for long. I've met I’ve talked before about the importance of consistency. One workout, or one week of training, doesn’t make any difference by itself, no matter how hard you train.
At 42 years old, at 90kg I have low body fat all year, can squat 230kg, but while I train hard, I don’t do anywhere as much as many of my clients first believed was needed when they started training with me that they needed to train to have low body fat. Good training is fairly simple
I’m not lazy; if doing more would achieve better results, I would do it. I train the way I do as it works, I can recover and do the next workout, and I can do it consistently for a long time. I also don’t have any aches and pains which not many people my age can say.
This Has Been my Routine for the Past 6 Months.
- Weight lifting 5 days a week (sometimes 3 or 4 days a week). The workouts are done in 45 minutes.
- Cardio. 30-40 minutes 3 times a week. This is very easy work where the heart rate never goes very high.
- Nutrition wise I'm careful with what I eat day to day, but I’ll eat and drink what I want when I’m socialising.
So if doing as much as you can during a session, or during the week is right, what should you do?
- Pick a number of days you can realistically train every week. I've trained twice a week for a long period and had good results. I would rather a client train two days a week for a long period than aim for 5 days a week and stop after a month.
- Focus on progressive overload and not how tired, sore or exhausted you are when deciding how good your training is going. Progressive overload is just adding reps or weight. You won't be able to progressively overload every exercise on every session, but over time they should be improving. Progressive overload will show if my training is working.
- Remember while working hard is needed to get results, the goal isn't to work hard. The goal is to make progress. If you're consistently making progress, you know you're doing enough.